Mississippi, Goddamn, Cont'd

Once, while researching a story, I had occasion to talk to a legal aid attorney from Jackson, Mississippi. The attorney was of great help to me but insisted on complete anonymity. The attorney was afraid to be fired, because the attorney was doing the job of being an attorney so well. Let us be candid. If there is a problem, somewhere in America, arising from the complicated problems of race and class, it is generally found in its purest form in Mississippi. It is not adulterated by pretense, nor cut by the softening agent of nuance. It is taken down in clear form there, straight up, 100-proof or better. You can die from it.

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Consider, for example, the lawsuit brought by those brave souls who work in the Mississippi branch of the American Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU is suing the law-enforcement apparatus of Scott County because, the ACLU says, the law-enforcement apparatus in Scott County has devised for itself a kind of phantom zone in which the Constitution of the United State does not apply. Get busted in Scott County and you can sit in jail indefinitely, without a lawyer, and without being indicted for whatever it was for which you got clicked.

"This is indefinite detention, pure and simple. Scott County jail routinely holds people without giving them a lawyer and without formally charging them for months, with no end in sight. For those waiting for indictment, the county has created its own Constitution-free zone," said Brandon Buskey, Staff Attorney at the ACLU's Criminal Law Reform Project. "These prisoners' cases are frozen, their lives outside the jail are disintegrating, and they haven't even been charged with a crime. The county has tossed these people into a legal black hole."

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According to the ACLU's complaint, it works this way. You get busted. You are poor. You are likely black, but this is not about race because nothing ever is about race. The judge in your case sets a bail figure far beyond your ability either to pay it, or to get someone to go your bond. You sit in jail. You declare yourself indigent. The judge fails to assign you legal counsel. You sit in jail. The judge and prosecutors don't indict you. The judge says you can't be indicted until you have a lawyer, which he has neglected to assign you. You sit in jail. Joseph Heller's ghost comes to Mississippi and sues for copyright infringement.

One plaintiff in the ACLU's suit, Joshua Bassett, has been in the Scott County Detention Center since January 16 of this year; he has been denied an attorney and a grand jury hearing. Another, Octavious Burks, has been in the jail since November 18, 2013. Neither Mr. Bassett nor Mr. Burks could afford their bail. Mr. Burks has been through this ordeal twice before. Since 2009, he has been jailed in Scott County on three separate charges without indictment or counsel. The ACLU has evidence that many others have been trapped in the Scott County Detention Center for months at a time because they couldn't pay bail and, like Mr. Bassett and Mr. Burks, were denied counsel and a grand jury hearing.

It ill serves a democracy to have a judicial system that works so hard in opposition to the rights of its citizens. It truly subverts a democracy if said judicial system descends into obvious farce while doing so. Jesus, people, it's 2014.